Fr. Alban Goodier (1869–1939) was a Jesuit who served for a time as Archbishop of Bombay, India (15th December, 1919 – 1st October 1926) . He was also a well-respected writer who contributed many articles to the magazine The Messenger of the Sacred Heart. He wrote over a dozen books, including Saints for Sinners and The School of Love.

Goodier, Alban (1869-1939), Jesuit and Roman Catholic archbishop of Bombay, was born on 14 April 1869 in Great Harwood, Lancashire, the second of five surviving children of William Goodier, a biscuit (cookie) manufacturer, and his wife, Elizabeth Kitching. Goodier was initially educated at a series of primary schools in Great Harwood and Preston. In January 1881 he was sent to Hodder Place, the preparatory institution for the Jesuit public school, Stonyhurst College, near Clitheroe. He attended Stonyhurst between 1882 and 1887, and then entered the Society of Jesus at Manresa House, Roehampton, Surrey. 

His Jesuit formation consisted of two years' noviciate at Roehampton, London, then several years studying the humanities, taking a second in the external London University BA in classics in 1891, before commencing studies in philosophy at St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, from 1891 to 1894. There followed some six years of schoolmastering, also at Stonyhurst, after which Goodier went for theological studies to St. Beuno's College, St Asaph, Denbighshire. Ordained a priest in 1903 he spent a further year of study at St Beuno's and completed his final period of training at Tronchiennes in Belgium. Upon his return to England in 1905 he was appointed to teach Greek and Latin to Jesuit students at Manresa House, Roehampton. He became both the religious superior of the Jesuit students and prefect of studies, a position he was to hold until 1914. It was during these years that he developed an interest in the theory of education, particularly in the Jesuitratio studiorum, and he published several articles on the topic in the Catholic periodical The Month. In part as rival to the contemporary Everyman series he established, in 1909, the Catholic Library with the aim of making Catholic literature available at low cost. This venture was not a commercial success and did not survive the outbreak of war in 1914.

During the First World War the government of India was faced with the task of expelling or interning foreign hostile nationals. The German Jesuits responsible for the administration of St Xavier's University College, Bombay, appealed to the English Jesuits for help and requested that Goodier, despite his narrow background and experience, be sent as the principal of the college. When Goodier arrived in Bombay in November 1914 he found the students almost invariably anti-English. He attributed this to the influence of the German Jesuits with whom he had an uneasy relationship. Goodier's initial contacts with the government of Bombay were also strained, and he was inclined to blame the Germans for misleading him as to the government's attitude to Catholic missionaries in the Bombay area.

In addition to his administrative duties Goodier was appointed professor of English, but with the further internment of most of the remaining German Jesuits, of which he heartily approved, the college was seriously short of personnel. He took the opportunity of the long vacation in the summer of 1915 to go to England to recruit more staff for St Xavier's. He was a successful administrator and became rector of the college, fellow and syndic of Bombay University and a justice of the peace, the first Catholic priest in Bombay to hold such a position. During the course of another visit to Europe in 1919 Goodier was informed that the Holy See intended to make him archbishop of Bombay. The announcement was delayed by several months because of difficulties with the Portuguese government which, since the sixteenth century, had immense influence over Roman Catholic affairs in India. In 1924 he was also appointed apostolic administrator of the diocese of Poona.

Goodier's ministry in India was marked by a love of the poor and he established several well-known charities to look after the needs of orphans, the destitute, and the elderly. On the other hand he shared many of the British prejudices towards India typical of his day, believing Indians to be cunning and deceitful and incapable of self-government. Somewhat uncritical of British administration he went so far as to defend, in his private correspondence, the conduct of General Reginald Dyer and Sir Michael O'Dwyer in connection with the Amritsar massacre of 1919.

Goodier's career as archbishop was fraught with difficulties. The Portuguese-nominated patriarch of Goa had jurisdiction over all priests ordained in his see, irrespective of where they might subsequently serve in India. In the diocese of Bombay a considerable number of parishes had Goanese priests who refused to recognize Goodier as their ecclesiastical superior. Relations between Goodier and these clergy were very tense with the archbishop insisting on his rights as the ordinary in Bombay and the Goanese with equal vigor resisting what they saw as Goodier's interference in their affairs. Petitions were organized demanding Goodier's removal from office. A man of acute sensitivities who had been placed in a stressful situation, his health began to fail and on a visit to Rome in 1926 he resigned, and was given the titular archbishopric of Hierapolis in Phrygia. Nevertheless, his recommendation that the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Goa be restricted to his own diocese and that archbishops of Bombay should alternately be drawn from among the English and Portuguese clergy formed the substance of a new concordat signed by the Holy See and the Portuguese government in May 1928.

Back in England, Goodier served as an assistant to the cardinal-archbishop of Westminster between 1931 and 1932, and he acted as an unofficial adviser to the Colonial Office on matters of religious education in India. Increasing ill health forced him to retire to the Benedictine convent, St Scholastica's Abbey, Teignmouth, Devon, where he served as chaplain to the nuns. An excellent public speaker he was widely known as a retreat giver and was much in demand, ill health notwithstanding, as a preacher. His many writings include The Public Life of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 vols., 1930) and The Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ (1933). Goodier's works were pious rather than scholarly, although his last book, An Introduction to the Study of Ascetical and Mystical Theology (1938), was the product of a course he taught to Jesuit seminarians at Heythrop College, Oxfordshire, in the years 1934-8. He died from an angina attack at St. Scholastica's on 13 March 1939 and was buried at Manresa House, Roehampton, five days later.

“And after the days of her Purification, according to the Law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried Him to Jerusalem, to present Him to the Lord. As it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘That every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord: and to offer sacrifice, according as it is written in the Law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons’” (Luke 2:22-24).

1. The story of Christmas, crowded as it is, is quickly told and quickly over. The Holy Family do not give themselves much time to loiter. First, they fulfil the custom binding on all the children of Abraham, then they fulfil the law binding all the children of Moses. The mother was “unclean” until she had presented herself at the temple and made her offering, and received the absolution of the priest; the first-born, if a boy, was by right the child of the temple, and must be brought back by the parents that it might remain their own. Here, then, we find the Immaculate Mother with the utmost simplicity in the world, without a thought that it should be otherwise, eager only that the Law should be observed, and that the blessing of God should be upon her, counting herself as defiled, and letting others count her as defiled, at a moment which, of all others, was the triumph of a virgin’s innocence.

2. The presentation of Our Lord rests on another basis. This had become part of the Law as a commemoration of the deliverance from Egypt. In the law we read: “When the Lord shall have brought thee into the land of the Canaanite, as he swore to thee and to thy fathers, and shall give it to thee, thou shalt set apart all that openeth the womb to the Lord, and all that is first brought forth of thy cattle, whatsoever thou shalt have of the male sex, thou shalt consecrate to the Lord. And every first-born of men thou shalt redeem with a price. And when thy son shall ask thee tomorrow, “What is this?” Yhou shalt answer him, ‘With a strong hand did the Lord bring us forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for when Pharaoh was hardened and would not let us go, the Lord slew every first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first born of man to the first-born of beasts, therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the womb of the male sex, and all the first-borns of my sons I redeem. ... It shall be a sign in thy hand, and as a thing hung between thine eyes, for a remembrance, because the Lord hath brought us forth out of Egypt with a strong hand’”  Thus did Our Lord link up in Himself the type and its fulfilment, the deliverance which had been, and the greater deliverance at His later and greater self-oblation.

3. And this was the first occasion on which Our Lord came into His Father’s house. He was to come to it again in many capacities; in a few years as a disciple, once more fulfilling the custom of the law; later as an indignant purifier, when “the zeal of His Father’s house would consume Him”; later again as a teacher and worker of miracles; then as a triumphant king on Palm Sunday; and finally, when He would denounce from its steps its priests and its masters, and would leave it never to return. Then the Temple would pass away, not a stone being left as a stone; and instead Our Lord would again be presented to His Father in countless temples throughout the world.

Summary

1. In the Purification Our Lady reckons herself with the defiled.

2. In the Presentation Our Lord is Himself the completion of the type of the deliverance.

3. The coming to His Temple, then and now. 

“And there was a prophetess called Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was far advanced in years, and had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity. And she was a widow until four score and four years, who departed not from the Temple, by fastings and prayers serving day and night. Now she, at the same hour, coming in, gave praise to the Lord, and spoke of him to all that looked for the redemption of Israel. And after they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth” ( Luke 2:36-39).

1. As some of the Fathers of the Church tell us, no class, age, or sex was to be left out in the homage which was to be paid to Our Lord in His infancy. Poor and rich were to be there, innocent children and the aged, men and women, those in the world and those consecrated to the service of God; and among these it is peculiarly fitting that a place should be found for a representative of that class which seems to grow with the growth of time and which is of incalculable service to God’s cause. I speak of the devoted women workers who have been conspicuous in the Church from the beginning; who followed Our Lord and His apostles and ministered to them, who were specially dear to St. Paul and were constantly mentioned by Him, who shine conspicuously in the ages of martyrdom, being the protectors of the bones of martyrs and often the saviors of popes and confessors, who throughout history have been the occasion of the spread of the Faith, and who to-day, by their lives, by their influence, by their prayer, by their active cooperation, are in a true sense the support of the Church.

2. A patron of this class of women is Anna; not, apparently, bound by any vow, but a widow, living in the world, devoting herself to prayer, and mortification, and the service of the altar. To such souls it is given to see more than others; in some mysterious way their knowledge of the supernatural grows from more to more; they have an instinct for the truth, and many a theologian has learnt from a word of theirs something which his study has never reached. Such souls, too, have a power in their words; without knowing it themselves their constant union with and service of God enables them to “give praise to the Lord, and to speak of Him to all that look for the redemption of Israel.” We need not then look far for the source of Anna’s discovery of the Child in Simeon’s arms.

3. All the first act had now been played. The manifestation had been made to all classes, and the Holy Family could retire with their treasure from the stage. St. Luke tells us that “after they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord they returned into Galilee, to their city Nazareth.” This raises the difficulty about the story of the Wise Men at Bethlehem, told by St. Matthew. But the difficulty should not be great. St. Luke for some reason has not chosen to tell the story over again; hence he links up his narration of the Nativity with that which is to follow, in a comprehensive sentence such as is not uncommon in the Gospels. The retiring nature of the family is what he has most in mind, and he lets that alone appear.

Summary

1. Anna the prophetess represents the women workers in the Church, who have always been a great source of blessing.

2. She represents their work and she witnesses to their reward.

3. The family went back into retirement. 

“And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his Mother: Behold this Child is set for the ruin and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; and thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35).

1. We have already had prophecies concerning the future life of the Child. The Angel has said that “He shall be great”; Zachary has proclaimed His mission; the choir of angels have spoken to the shepherds of His Kingship. But no one has yet recorded that part of His future which is most distinctly marked in Isaias, the lot of suffering. No one has alluded to that discriminating character of His mission which is announced by the prophet Malachy. “Behold He cometh, said the Lord of hosts, and who shall be able to think of the day of His coming, and who shall stand to see Him? For He is like a refining fire, and like the fuller’s herb.” This last is the first part of Simeon’s prophecy: The Child is to be a rock of offence to many, and to many more, may we not add? He is to be the resurrection.

2. The second part of the prophecy refers to the Child Himself and His Mother. He Himself is to go through the agony of contradiction; she must suffer along with Him. Already for Our Lady the sympathetic pain of the Passion is beginning; already her “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” is bearing fruit. A fond mother suffers untold secret agony in her heart when she watches her child and wonders about its future; perhaps she would suffer more if she knew all. And Mary, if she did not know all, at least knew enough from this moment to have the sword continually cutting through her heart.

3. Then follows, apparently, the reason for all this: “That out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed.” As so often in the Scripture, above all in the prophecies of Scripture, in both the Old Testament and the New, one suddenly comes upon a sentence which seems to contain an infinity of meaning, which we cannot hope to fathom, which it would be mere presumption on our part to attempt to fathom, and yet which affords us an endless source of contemplation. Put it in a kind of litany, and see how indeed the prophecy has been and is being fulfilled.

This Child is set for the fall of many that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed. This Child is set for the resurrection of many that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed. This Child is set for a sign that shall be contradicted that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed. “Thy own soul a sword shall pierce that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed.” In such a way it is not difficult for my own thoughts to be discovered.

Summary

1. The Child is to be for the fall of many, and for the resurrection of many.

2. The Child and His Mother are to suffer in the task.

3. The motive: “that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed.” 

“And [he] said: ‘Now thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word, in peace; because my eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before Thy people: a light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.’ And His father and mother were wondering at these things which were spoken concerning Him” (Luke 2:25-28).

1. This, then, is “the consolation of Israel” for which Simeon and his companions had been yearning; and the moment it comes, though it be represented only by a tiny Child lying in his arms, it is enough to make life no longer of value, enough to give him peace for all eternity. His Canticle is the last in the great trilogy. Mary had opened it with the Magnificat; Zachary had taken up Our Lady’s song and had developed part of it in the Benedictus; Simeon now carries on the thought of Zachary and dwells on the mercies of the Lord to the world. He begins with thanksgiving for the great grace granted to himself; echoing the words of Jacob at the recovery of Joseph: “Now shall I die with joy, because I have seen thy face, and leave thee alive”; and yet more those of the elder Tobias: “Now, O Lord, do with me according to Thy will, and command my spirit to be received in peace.” He had been permitted to see, not merely a consolation for himself, but “Thy salvation,” the “consolation of Israel.”

2. Then he develops this “salvation,” and in a way that may well astonish us. Hitherto we have felt the Jews preoccupied with the thought of the Messias as being their special Redeemer; and we have felt all sympathy with their mind. But here on a sudden, from the most intense circle of the Jewish expectation, comes an outburst which proves that the prospect before them reached far beyond the children of Abraham; it extends to and includes the whole world. The Child is be a light, not for the Jews only but for the enlightenment of all nations; on this account He is to be the glory of God’s people, Israel. This is the aspect of prophecy on which Simeon lays hold, that aspect which the less faithful Jews seem to have neglected, for while the latter clung to the Messias as their King, many prophets had foretold Him “as the desired of all nations” Who “hath revealed His justice in the sight of the Gentiles.” In this sense, then, while Zachary looks to the fulfilment of the past, Simeon already opens the new era and looks to the fulfilment in the future.

3. The sentence which follows is surely the sentence of Our Lady herself. Who else would have said of her that she “wondered at these things?” Who else would have given Joseph the first place? “And His Father and mother were wondering at these things which were spoken concerning Him.” At what did they wonder? The evidence of the Magnificat alone is enough to show that to Mary there was nothing very new in these words of Simeon; and the prophecy concerning herself had not yet been uttered. Is it not the wonder which every saint which every contemplative experiences in the ever deeper understanding of the truths of revelation? We know what is meant by Christ Our Lord, but from time to time, in Communion, in prayer, in times of suffering, we seem to see, not merely to know. Then we, too, “marvel”; as perhaps did Our Lady at such times as this.

Summary

1. Simeon’s consolation is enough to make their life and all that it contains, joy or sorrow, few or many days, of no account.

2. His consolation extends not to his own people only, but to all the world.

3. And the parents wondered, marveled; what was the nature of their marveling? 

“And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Ghost was in him. And he had received an answer from the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. And he came by the Spirit into the Temple. And when His Parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the Law, he also took Him into his arms, and blessed God” (Luke 2:25-28).

1. Holy Simeon is a figure in the history of the Jews which is full of significance. Just as Zachary and Elizabeth could not have been alone, but must have had many associates, faithful to the true tradition of the Messias like themselves; just as the families from which Mary and Joseph came could not have been the only faithful households, but must have been associated with many others; so Simeon, and later the prophetess Anna, must have been two among many who were faithful in “looking for the consolation of Israel.” Of all that faithful background the whole of the New Testament tells us practically nothing; but one may say that in this the Gospels do not differ from history in general. In all times, under all circumstances, underneath the excitements of life which history most loves to record, there has always been, and there still always is, a great ocean of goodness on which the world ultimately relies.

2. Hence Simeon helps us to restore a right perspective in our estimates of mankind. We are always prone to make sweeping condemnations, forgetting that all generalizations of individual men must always be inaccurate. Though Bethlehem had no home for Our Lord, not all the people of Bethlehem were His enemies; Bethlehem was the home of the Holy Innocents and their suffering mothers. Though the Jews of Jerusalem rejected Him, yet not all were opposed to Him; we have enough in Simeon and others like him to prove this. And so in our own time, no matter who may be our adversaries, temporal or spiritual, we may be sure that in their ranks there are many sincere and single-minded souls looking, like ourselves, according to their lights, “for the consolation of Israel.” And perhaps especially is this true of the Jews.

3. Simeon was apparently no man of action; he seems to have done nothing in particular. He may or may not have been a priest in the temple; St. Luke does not say so, though some may well argue that his part in this scene would imply it. But he was “just and devout”; he was true in his life and spiritual in his mind; he was a man of prayer, looking to the great end, and receiving communications from God. He was a contemplative, with a clean heart, and the two qualities gave him all he needed, the power to recognize Our Lord when he met Him. “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” Such a man is led “by the Spirit”; such a man is tried, but at the end of the trial it is given to “take the Child into his arms, and to bless God.”

Summary

1. Simeon reminds us of the multitude of faithful souls who were looking for “the consolation of Israel.”

2. He reminds us that there are many such outside our own ranks today.

3. The prayerful nature of Simeon is the nature which most easily recognizes Our Lord. 

“And when there also they began to be famished, the people cried to Pharao for food. And he said to them: ‘Go to Joseph; and do all that he shall say to you!’” (Genesis 41:55).

1. The Holy Family is the model of all family life; the reproduction of the life of the Holy Family among men is the surest guarantee of contentment and prosperity in this world and of happiness in the next; where nations are most happy there we find the closest resemblances to the Holy Family in the houses of their citizens; the fallacy of much modern legislation, of many modern tendencies, and of many more modern cravings, lies precisely in this ignoring and elimination of the spirit of the Holy Family from the home. And the head of the Holy Family is not the Child, nor the Mother, but St. Joseph. It is, then, no wonder that as the ages have advanced, as the struggle of Christianity has more and more converged round the defense of the family, the figure of St. Joseph should have emerged more and more from its natural place of retirement, and should have been set in the front of the battle-line, and that he should have become the patron of family life.

2. If we look into the secrets of this Holy Family, we cannot but be struck with the love which bound it together. “We shall know only in Heaven what Joseph was to Mary and Mary to Joseph.” The initial material for affection that was in them both, the consecration to one another by the hand of God Himself, the sharing of the care of the Child Jesus, the companionship, faithful and unstinted, in many mutual sorrows and anxieties, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in pain” the love returned to them both by the Child that stood between them, the trust He placed in them, the confidences He gave them, the kindness He received from them and returned in His own way, and on the other side the utter devotedness of the foster father, who had no thought for himself, but only for the charge entrusted to him, all these things compel us to the peace of that Holy Family, and to affection for Joseph its protector, who kept that house a house of joy, no matter what vicissitudes it had to undergo.

3. But of another phase of life is St. Joseph the patron, and that is its end. After the finding in the Temple we hear of him no more; when the public life begins, at Cana of Galilee, and at other places where his presence would seem to have been essential, he does not appear; the only conclusion is that some time during the eighteen years of the hidden life he passed away. His work of protection was done; Jesus was now able to look to Himself and to provide for His Mother; then God took Joseph away. He had lived a perfect life, he had done a perfect work, in the doing of that work his own soul, unnoticed by himself so devoted was he to the others, had been made a perfect thing; the most perfect, the Church permits us to believe, that the angels have ever carried to Heaven. To him the end came; in the arms of Jesus and Mary he passed away, the most perfect of deaths, closing the most perfect of lives, a thing of sweetest agony, a thing of agonizing sweetness, as a truly happy death cannot but always be to those who know and have felt what is life and what is love.

Summary

1. The Holy Family is the model of family life, and St. Joseph is its head and patron.

2. The secrets of the Holy Family, founded in love, extol the soul of St. Joseph evermore.

3. St. Joseph, the patron of a happy life, is also the patron of a happy death. 

“Wilt thou know, O vain man, that Faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, offering up Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou that Faith did cooperate with his works: and by works Faith was made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, saying: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him to justice, and he was called the friend of God … For even as the body without the spirit is dead, so also Faith without works is dead” ( James 2:20-25).

1. The time being now imminent, it was essential that Mary should be given a husband and a protector. Of this, too, the Jews must have been aware; for it was a traditional desire among the maidens of the chosen people that they might perhaps, when married, be selected to be the mother of the Messias. If, then, one easily discovers types of Our Lady in the Old Testament, we do not wonder that anticipations are found of her spouse, St. Joseph. Thus the faithful servant of Abraham, who brought Rebecca from Mesopotamia and protected her on her way; the faithful guardian Mardochai, who protected Esther, and directed her in her great task of saving her people; these and others would seem to foreshadow the Protector of Mary.

2.. But most of all is he seen in his name sake, Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel; and this anticipation would seem to be sanctioned by the Church in the free use made in her office of the story of one for the glory of the other. Joseph the dreamer; Joseph sent into obscurity in Egypt; Joseph unknown and unnoticed, though coming of a noble line; Joseph the spotless virgin, whose purity could not be sullied; Joseph entrusted with the care of a kingdom, so that “Go to Joseph” becomes the cry of hope for a whole people one asks oneself of which Joseph these things are said, the old or the new, so perfectly does the type correspond with the anti-type.

3. In all these foreshadowings there is much that prepares us for the character and elevation of St. Joseph. Of his antecedents Scripture tells us nothing; even the Apocrypha have less to say of him than of the other two; but this is in keeping with the spirit and nature of the man as he reveals himself in his later action. St. Joseph is the man unknown, the man whose selflessness is perfect, the man who has no history of his own, but only lives in others, for others, fulfilling the bidding of God. He is prepared from within, perhaps all unconsciously even to himself, for the great dignity that is designed for him the husband of Mary, the foster-father and guardian of the Holy Child, the patron of the Universal Church. What that preparation may signify or include we may endeavor to fathom in meditation, but we know we shall never wholly comprehend. Still, these things we can assume; the spouse of Mary will himself be the most innocent of men; the Guardian of Jesus will be perfect in wisdom and prudence; the Patron of the Church will be one filled with zeal for the glory of the House of God.

Summary

1. An anticipation of St. Joseph would seem to be reasonably seen in the Old Testament, as in the servant of Abraham, Mardochai, etc.

2. Above all is it seen in the other Joseph, of whom so much can be said that is equally said of St. Joseph himself.

3. And for his early life, we have abundant matter for meditation in the silent training of the future trusted servant of God. 

“And His Mother kept all these words in her heart” (Luke 2:51).

1. Scholars consider themselves amply justified in concluding that the evidence for these first two chapters of St. Luke have been drawn from Our Lady’s own lips, and are even the very words of Our Lady herself; and the repeated statement that she “kept all these words in her heart,” is taken as signifying that St. Luke took the narrative from her. She was a soul of not many words. Wherever we meet her, except on one occasion, she does little more than stand by and look on; when she does speak it is in the full and measured words of one who has an instinct to keep silence rather than to express herself at all.

2. On the other hand, the one occasion on which, as it were, she lets herself speak from her full heart, shows both the matter and the depth of her meditation. The Magnificat teems with Scripture references. No one could have uttered that wonderful prayer who had not (1) pondered long on the words of Holy Scripture, (2) seen their application to and fulfilment in the Messias, (3) led her thoughts on from the consequences of His coming to the whole world. The same is seen in the Angel’s words at the Annunciation; he is speaking to one who, he knows, thinks along this definite line. This, then, we may safely take it, is Our Lady’s “method” of meditation; from Scripture to Our Lord, from Our Lord to men, with her self affected by the conclusion as the “Handmaid of the Lord.” God promised, God redeemed, God spread the fruits of the redemption among men; and so long as this was done all was done. From this her “practical conclusion” was easily drawn; it was that she should dispose herself to be used by Him in whatever way He chose for this end, as His simple “Handmaid.”

3. Hence when later we find her saying of herself that she “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart,” we have little difficulty in following her mind. She took each scene in her Child’s life as it opened out before her; she gathered up every word that was spoken concerning Him. In each event she saw the guiding and redeeming hand of God; in every word she heard the echo of the voice of God. Both alike she interpreted in the light of her Son, seeing in them greater significance because He was the central figure, knowing that because of Him everything had its meaning, its purpose, its power, its lesson. The question: “Why hast thou done so!” was not once only, but continually in her heart. And for answer, as we see unmistakably in the Magnificat, she looked beyond the ages, and reflected on the fruit all this would bear to all mankind; the good tidings of great joy that it would be to all the people, so that all generations would bless the Lord for blessing her; the thoughts that out of many hearts would be revealed, making her agony, whatever it might be, worthwhile; the numbers that would give up all, and would set about their Father’s business, just because her Son had said the word, and given the example, in giving up even her, His dearly loved Mother.

Summary

1. Our Lady is a soul of few words.

2. But a soul of much meditation; and the matter and manner of her meditations are not difficult to discover. “To restore all things in Christ,” might be given as their common title.

3. Hence one may easily estimate what it was she kept in her heart. 

“And Jesus increased in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men” (Luke 2:52).

1. We cannot hope in a short meditation to fathom the meaning of this simple sentence. It has given rise to endless opinions among the Fathers of the Church, to endless discussions among theologians, and even the contemplative saints have given it various interpretations. But there are certain fundamental truths which all accept, and upon these it is possible to build enough material to supply a saint’s meditations all his life. Our Lord was God and man. As God He did not and could not grow in any way; in this nature His knowledge, His wisdom, His grace were the same from all eternity; He was as God full and complete even when He lay helpless in the manger. But as man He could and did grow; as man He was limited, even as are all men; we watch the Child’s body being fed and increasing in the natural way, the Boy’s body “waxing strong,” the body of the full-grown man, first resisting cruel treatment, and finally being beaten by torture and dying like any other.

2. And as His body grew, so did such knowledge and such mental experience grow as depended primarily upon the body. With us men, placed and circumscribed as we are, all our knowledge depends in some way upon the body; as the philosophers say: “There is nothing in the intellect which is not first in the senses.” Our eyes, our ears, our sense of touch, etc., are the means by which we grow in understanding; we learn the facts of this life, we draw from them  their essence, and with this essence we arrive at our conclusions. So was it with the Holy Child. As a Child He “lived and learned.”  St. Paul tells us that “He learned obedience from the things that He suffered”; and we may add that He learned many other things as well. He learned above all what human life was as we human beings learn it. And as He learned so He showed this growth in His life; as it were He kept His Divine understanding in check, while He lived as a true Man among men. And His Mother watched the growth, and marveled at, and recorded it.

3. “Jesus increased in wisdom.” Wisdom includes many things; it includes depth of insight, breadth of understanding, sagacity of judgment, prudence of counsel. We learn in the hope that learning will make us wise; we pass through experiences of many kinds, and every experience will, if we will let it, make us wiser. In this sense did Our Lord increase. “Jesus increased in age.” Age has different stages. The virtues of the Child are not those of the youth; those of the youth are not the virtues of the full-grown man. So did Our Lord increase. As a Child He was a child, and acted as a child; as a Boy, he acted as a boy; among men He was a Man, “all things to all men”, “in all things like to man,” so that throughout His career his fellow Nazarenes had noticed nothing strange, unnatural, not even as it seemed supernatural, about Him. “Jesus increased in grace with God and men.” In grace with God because at each step in life He “did the work His Father gave Him to do “; in grace with men, if only for the simple reason that the perfect saint is the perfect man. “He hath done all things well,” was the verdict of the crowd early in His public life.

Summary

1. Our Lord could not “increase” as God; but He did “increase” as Man.

2. He grew in body, He grew in mind, He showed that growth in His life.

 3. He grew in wisdom, and age, and grace, as all men grow. 

“And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them” (Luke 2:51).

1. He had finished this particular work which His Father had given Him to do. He had sanctified religious instruction; He had, in this simple event, provided for all time a proof that indeed He was more than man, that His discovery of Himself, as some modern critics would assert, was no gradual process, but that He knew Himself and His mission from the beginning; to go on from that moment teaching, to begin His public life at the age of twelve, would not have been in accordance with His fixed plan, of living the complete life of man, of bearing all man’s burdens, of being “in all things like to man, sin alone excepted.” Most men must live out their lives in hiddenness and seclusion; then Our Lord must let men see that He would do the same. He has left us a complete account of these eighteen years eighteen years, let us reckon it in our own lives, is a long time but He has left it complete in only two short sentences.

2. “He went down to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” In this, then, there was no change of plan. He was still “about His Father’s business”—that is the one consistent thread that runs through His whole life; the one and only claim He makes at the end when He cries: “Father, I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do!” But there is a change of another kind. “When I was a child,” says St. Paul of himself, “I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away the things of a child.” And the same is true of Jesus. Hitherto He had been subject to His parents, but now for the first time is it said that He “was subject to them.” And rightly, for the subjection of a child to its parents scarcely deserves that name; it is rather affectionate dependence. But when the child has grown up and still obeys; when the boy, the youth, the full-grown man still keeps his parents in the first place, considering them, serving them, working for them, then we have free obedience. And this we have from this time forward in Our Lord; at the age of twelve He “put away the things of a child” but He “was subject to them” none the less.

3. We look into human hearts, we look through history, we look at the first disaster of all, and we ask ourselves the cause of all the misery, in individual souls, in the whole world. Detailed and detached causes are many; but the one great disorder underlies them all; it is that of insubordination, disobedience. Adam disobeyed and fell; mankind disobeys and falls; the nations bring themselves to grief by encouraging disobedience; however sweet the fruits of liberty, however noble the ideal of freedom, still the heart is a corrupted heart, and a source of hopeless misery, to itself and to all who come under its influence, which acknowledges no master, which obeys no law. Obedience is the bond of union, the source of strength, the safeguard of peace, the power in action, the tree that bears fruit both material and spiritual. But it is a hard lesson for independent human nature to learn; no wonder, then, that the Savior of the world chose to teach it at such great expense.

Summary

1. Our Lord above all things wished to be “in all things like to man.”

2. Hence, like man, He was subject; not only as a Child, but also of His own free choice.

3. At this cost He taught the lesson that most needs to be learned, obedience. 

“And it came to pass that after three days they found Him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard Him were astonished at His wisdom and His answers. And seeing Him they wondered. And His Mother said to Him: ‘Son, why hast Thou done so to us? Behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing!’ And He said to them: ‘How is it that you sought Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?’ And they understood not the word that He spoke unto them” (Luke 2:46-50).

1. We have elsewhere seen how Our Lord sanctioned and sanctified many phases of human life by His own hidden life at Nazareth. But here we have one special feature as it were taken apart and solemnly consecrated apart; the feature of education. Of course, later in life He sanctified it in abundance by His public life of teaching; but there is a special appropriateness in this earlier consecration, when He Himself was in the role of a pupil, and when in this formal way, in the Temple itself, He could solemnly sanctify that all — important work which the Church has ever claimed for her own. Is it not true to say that there is on earth no more sure means of securing one’s own salvation than that religious teaching, nor any surer way of doing good to others? There is joy for many in this certainty; for many who of all people in the world are perhaps most in need of encouragement.

2. Mary and Joseph found Him in these surroundings. They saw the Child sitting among the listeners; they noticed the attention He had attracted; they read in the faces of the doctors that He had impressed them. How, we do not know; but when Mary “pondered in her heart” all she saw and heard, she must have rejoiced at this first shining of the Light that had come into the world. There was joy in the mere finding of the Child; there was an added joy in finding Him where He was, doing what He was; it was a sign to her of the special work which was near to His heart, and therefore which was near to her own. As we contemplate the scene it seems impossible to believe that her words recorded by St. Luke followed immediately upon the finding of the Child. There was much between; above all the joy. “I have found Him Whom my soul loveth; I have held Him and will not let Him go.”

3. But when the first thrill was parsed, when she had become sure that He was again her own, then the reflection on the mysterious behavior was natural. “They understood not”—even after her Son had spoken they did not understand. So naturally she asked, not complaining, or doubting, as she did not complain or doubt when she asked for understanding at the Annunciation. But the fact was there. For once the Child had given the father and Mother pain, a strange thing indeed. Why? “My Father’s business”—no more. Still she “understood not”—how should she? But now she understands. She knows now why on that occasion a sword pierced her soul, “that out of many hearts, thoughts might be revealed.” She hears now how for those three days of suffering “all generations have called her blessed.”

Summary

1. Our Lord in the Temple is the consecration of the Christian school.

2. The finding in the Temple was a double joy to Mary, in the Child, and in His work.

3. But there had been sorrow, which must have had a cause; that cause is the lesson it taught mankind. 

“And His parents went every year to Jerusalem, at the solemn day of the Pasch. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem, according to the custom of the feast. And after they had fulfilled the days, when they returned, the Child Jesus remained in Jerusalem, and His parents knew it not. And thinking that He was in the company, they came a day’s journey, and sought Him among their kinsfolks and acquaintance. And not finding Him, they returned into Jerusalem, seeking Him” (Luke 2:41-45).

1. Of all the scenes in the life of Our Lord one may say there is none more deliberately chosen, more obviously set for an example to many, than this; none which may be more easily understood as a kind of living parable; and yet none which rings with a clearer sense of truth and actuality, on the evidence of the chief sufferer in the scene, Our Blessed Lady. This is the one and only event in the whole of the life at Nazareth which she has chosen to leave on record; we need to remember this when we look for its interpretation. For there is a sense in which it tells against Our Lady’s own authority and place as Mother; therefore she adds her sanction to the limitations of a parent’s rights. A child is not a parent’s slave; authority does not mean despotism; the essence of good training is that, one day, the child should be his own master, with the power to choose and act for himself.

2. Therefore it was necessary that in this, too, Our Lord should be one with His children, whom He loved so much, and defend them from the gentlest, the most subtle, but perhaps the most dangerous of tyrannies. At the age of twelve, so it was understood among the Jews, a boy was master of himself, capable of choosing his path in life, his vocation. For that eventful day his earlier education had prepared him; in the synagogue and school, in the workshop, but most at home and at his mother’s knee, the child was prepared for the day, when he must make his own decision. So was it, we are safe in conjecturing, with the Child Who, according to His Mother’s account, “waxed strong, full of wisdom, and the grace of God was in Him”; loving words, of a Mother full of love, for a Child that had grown up at her side, and had shown her a Child’s true love and duty.

3. But when the time for the great decision came, how violent did it seem! No warning was given; it was made, not in the Mother’s quiet home but in His Father’s House; the circumstances were such as to aggravate the Mother’s agony. The feast was over; they were returning home; after a day’s journey the Child was missed; what had become of Him? Had He been already discovered? Had those from whom they had fled to Egypt found Him and killed Him? Had they been wrong in bringing Him to Jerusalem where enemies were known to be living? Or had He chosen some new guardian? What had she done, or not done, to be so left alone? We can easily imagine this sword of sorrow that pierced her heart as she ran back to Jerusalem, as she wandered aimlessly next day seeking for Him Whom her soul loved, willing only what He willed, but craving still to be, if it might be, the “Handmaid of the Lord.” The day of separation had come; she had always known it would come; but how differently it had come from what she had expected! How often is it so!

Summary

1. The story is an obvious declaration of the rights of children, the Christian child’s Magna Charta.

2. For this act of choice of vocation His early training had prepared Him.

3. And for the sake of so many parents in after time His Mother’s heart was made to suffer. 

1. A child’s life has seldom much to record. When a great man dies, and his biography is written, the first twenty years or more sometimes it will extend to thirty and even forty years is usually contained in a single chapter. That chapter will, more often than not, contain a few dates, a few utterly unimportant facts, with one or two traits of budding character more or less significant, and often enough somewhat forced in their interpretation. But this seems to be common among many of the greatest; the greater they have ultimately proved themselves, the more insignificant has their early life been. Witness such names as Cassar, Napoleon, Wellington, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Aquinas, Suarez, Bourdaloue, St. Gregory the Great, St. Bernard, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Philip Neri, and almost all the saints who have also proved themselves great in the world’s eyes. It is not, then, wonderful that the life of the Greatest of all should have been so hidden, so apparently insignificant.

2. Yet this very insignificance and hiddenness is the light He casts upon humanity at this time. He was “the light of the world,” and from the moment of the Nativity that light never failed. “My Father worketh until now,” He said on one occasion, “and I also work”; and He never ceased to do the work which had been given to Him from the beginning. In the ages to come the Church was continually to grow among the obscure, and the contemned, and the poor; in the West and the East today we know where we must mainly look for the life and strength of Christianity, indeed the life and strength of all Christian peoples. It is not among the richest; it is not among the mendicants and the poorest; it is among the healthy working classes whose hands are always full, who have more of the real contentment of life than have others, whose contentment leads to a certain generosity of nature, the best ground for the seed of all virtues, whether natural or supernatural. With these, then, does Our Lord associate in His days of growth; among these He “waxed strong, full of wisdom!”

3. Thus this hidden life is a life of many consecrations. It is the consecration of honorable poverty; it is the consecration of honorable work. It is the consecration of the home and of family life, of the relations between husband and wife, and between parents and children; it is the consecration of that society which is founded upon the family as the unit. It is the consecration of religious life, of the life of seclusion, the life of prayer, the life of poverty, the life of work, all of which religious life includes, and sanctifies, and teaches by example. It is the consecration, lastly, of that period of life which is so precious, so interesting, so momentous, the time of childhood and adolescence. Our Lord’s love of children is well known; His love of those who will help children is well known; when He blessed them, when He protected them, when He set them up as models, when He said, “As often as you do it to the least of these you do it to me,” He casts many sidelights on His own early life, His needs, His helps, and the gratitude with which that help was requited.

Summary

1. The Hidden Life is the life that makes for great ness, material and spiritual.

2. But not on that account is it insignificant or wasted.

3. The Hidden Life of Our Lord has consecrated many elements of modern civilization. 

“And He came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled what was said by the Prophet, that He shall be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:23).

1. St. Matthew has chosen almost all his incidents of the Nativity to show the fulfilment of prophecy. We know from St. Luke that the Annunciation took place at Nazareth; but after that the house must have been given up, and Bethlehem, being the city of David, must have seemed to her and to St. Joseph the most fitting place in which the Son of David should be brought up. But other human reasons drove them from Bethlehem, and the Angel s warning confirmed the conclusion; there was then little choice but to go back to their old abode, and let God work out the rest. Thus another prophecy was to be fulfilled: Our Lord was to be born at Bethlehem, but He was to be called a Nazarene. On the cross, long after, Our Lord was not to be called: “Jesus of Bethlehem, King of the Jews,” for that would have had something of honor and of title about it; but “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” was altogether too absurd and contradictory. Thus does God play with the prejudices of men.

2. It is well to notice how these men had deluded themselves in this matter. They had interpreted many prophecies aright. They had identified the Messias in many points. They had known He would be born in Bethlehem. But on their own confession they had failed here. “Search the Scriptures,” we find them saying later, “and see that out of Galilee a prophet riseth not.” And again, on another occasion they asked: “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” Yet St. Matthew gives us the prophecy which they could have known as well as he, which was as explicit as any other, that “He shall be called a Nazarene.” How was it that these keen students of the Scripture, above these searchers into prophecy, failed to discover this one? We may answer this as we would answer another: How was it that they failed, in spite of all their study, to recognize Our Lord at all? How is it that, throughout all time, so many recognize so much of truth as serves their purpose, but the whole truth they will not, and therefore do not see?

3. At the same time it is to be said in their defense that this prophecy quoted by St. Matthew is not clear. As some Fathers say, we should search in vain to find his words in any prophet s work. But probably what is meant is that the word “Nazarene” should be taken in its common sense at that time, which was a sense of contempt; to be called a Nazarene was to be demeaned, as a Greek would have been demeaned by being called a Boeotian, as in our time we might call a man a Hottentot, as in America one might be called “nigger.” So St. Matthew sums up in the word “Nazarene” those many prophecies which had described Our Lord as “despised, rejected, the outcast of the people”; just those which the Scribes and Pharisees had not found to their liking and had therefore eliminated from their concept of Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Summary

1. “Jesus of Nazareth,” a title, “to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles folly, but to them that believe Christ the power of God and the glory of God.”

2. “Jesus of Nazareth,” a title which the Jews did not relish, and therefore a title which they failed to recognize.

3. “Jesus of Nazareth,” a title beloved by Our Lord Himself, because it made Him “the despised, the rejected.” 

“Now Herod being dead, behold, an Angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph in Egypt, saying: ‘Rise and take the Child and His Mother, and go into the land of Israel, for they are dead who sought the life of the Child!’  Who, rising up, took the Child and His Mother, and came into the land of Israel. But hearing that Archelaus reigned in Judaea, in the room of Herod his father, he was afraid to go thither, and being warned in sleep, he retired into the parts of Galilee” (Matthew 2:19-22).

1. “Herod being dead!” It is no affair of ours to recall the career of this combination of worldly success and human misery, nor the facts of his utterly miserable end. There are few characters in history who might be taken as more typically personifying the character of Satan on earth; the evidently dominating will, the rule of terror, the fire within his very body, the hatred with which he is rewarded. This man is dead! The Angel does not mention his name; he does not even speak of him as an individual. “They are dead” he says, “who sought the life of the child,” as if to draw all thought away from the man himself. He is dead, and at once the work of God revives. It can be checked, it cannot be stopped. There is always some seed left, and when the hindrance is removed it revives. Is there any greater proof of God’s work in the world than this, its wonderful vitality?

2. The Holy Family “came into the land of Israel.” But here again is one of those strange dealings of God with man. He had found it good to send an angel to order the return, and that to Israel; but would it not have been just as easy to say, “Go into Nazareth,” or “Go into Bethlehem,” as “Go into the land of Israel”? Why act so vaguely? Why leave to Joseph the solution of a needless doubt? The order had been given to go into Egypt, and thus a prophecy had been fulfilled; was there not another prophecy which said that “He should be called a Nazarene”? Yes; one may ask question after question, give reason after reason; we do but show that God’s ways are not our ways, but that for all that “He ruleth from end to end mightily, and disposeth all things sweetly,” both when He guides us clearly and when He bids us walk in the dark, leaving us apparently to our own devices.

3. Joseph obeyed, but evidently not without fear and trembling. His first intention was to settle at Bethlehem, as St. Matthew tells us; but prudence born of fear made him hesitate. He must choose for himself; he must bring his natural powers into play; it must have grown upon him by this time that the Child whose career he was to guide through life was to be marked but little by supernatural signs. Tradition has been so shocked at this that it has attempted to fill up the picture with miraculous events; but Scripture tells us nothing of them, and Joseph is left to his life of perfect Faith and fidelity. So at least he is felt to be left, in almost every step of his career; but at the last he is guided to do the perfect will of God. It was so before the birth of Jesus; it is so now; it is so in the lives of all who have but the will of God before their eyes. Through the gloom that will always guides. 


Summary

1. The work of God revives when the human hindrance is removed.

2. God guides step by step; He will have us often walk in darkness.

3. But He secures that the goal is reached. 

“Then Herod, perceiving that he was deluded by the Wise Men, was exceedingly angry, and sending, killed all the men-children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the confines thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the Wise Men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the Prophet, saying: ‘A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning, Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not’” (Matthew 2:16-18).

1. One is appalled at the monstrosity of Herod, a man so steeped in blood that blood-shedding had become his one solution for every difficulty. And yet we know that this is no extraordinary thing. History and the best drama shows us that human nature, corrupted in any one direction, assumes that corruption as part of itself, so that the most unnatural vice becomes most natural. It is true with every vice, from calumny, and theft, and adultery, to murder, and insubordination, and contempt of God. This is the punishment of vice in this life; the fixing of this state for all eternity is Hell. And let it be noticed that every vice, not only that of murder, isolates a man more and more from his fellow-men, makes him their permanent enemy and them his, destroys in him all those qualities which belong to manhood, and leaves him no more than a wild beast, with the added claws and teeth that human intelligence provides.

2. On the other side are Herod s innocent victims. There is much to realize in the fact that they were not willing victims. They were too young to think or to choose; they were passive in their mothers’ arms and beneath the swords of their executioners; yet the Church has put them in the vanguard of her martyrs. So has it been time and again in the history of the Church; in our own day, when Herod seems to have arisen in so many places, in Asia Minor, in Spain, in Portugal, in Mexico, in Belgium, it would seem to be reaching its climax. In all these places, where victims have been immolated out of hatred for the Faith, without any power to say yes or no on their own part, there is for them and for us the joy of knowing that they are now “without spot before the throne of God,” witnesses to Him, not only here, but for all eternity. God “chooses whom He will”; and if those He chooses for death on the battlefield are by us put upon the “Roll of Honor,” no less should those be honored whom He chooses for death in His own cause.

3. Thus is the malice of evil-doers ever lastingly frustrated. They hack their way through to their own ends, while every victim that they slay not only cries to heaven for vengeance, but also adds to the glory and strength of that which they would fain destroy. Blood that is shed in whatever cause is usually a fruitful seed! and the more noble, the more pure the blood, the better in the distant future is likely to be the harvest. So the nations pride themselves in giving of their best; so God seems to choose the choicest of His children for this honor witness Fisher, and More, and Campion, and Arundel in our own country that afterwards, in the fullness of time, “thoughts may be revealed” Rachael may bewail her children, because they are not; but Rachel is the mother of children more numerous than the sands of the seashore.

Summary

1. Herod, the typical fruit of vice.

2. The Innocents, the vanguard of the martyrs.

3. The fruit of the martyrs is seen in this world and in the next. 

“Who, rising up, took the Child and His Mother by night, and retired into Egypt, and he was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying, ‘Out of Egypt have I called My Son!’” (Matthew 2:14-15).

1. The reflections on, and the lessons to be drawn from, the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt are obvious and trite, and have been repeated generation after generation. The story is always told to us as illustrating the perfect obedience of the three; of the Child to its early guardians, though Itself so very far above them; of Mary to Joseph, for the time being her superior; of Joseph himself to the obvious will of God, though worldly prudence, justice, wisdom, everything seemed to proclaim against it. And indeed it is a model which has stirred many a follower of Christ to its emulation; when an order has been sudden, when it has been seemingly needless, when it has been subversive of all that has gone before, and yet it has clearly been the place of duty to obey, how often has the example of Joseph and his two dependents enabled and ennobled the soul  even of a saint to do its part!

2. This alone might suffice for us here; for there are few thoughts which need to be more pondered by us all. Still it is also well to watch the wonderful hand of God, here as elsewhere, as it were, drawing together the threads of the world’s history, fulfilling type and prophecy by the hands of those who would gladly have frustrated both, sending His Son into exile in Egypt, because Israel had dwelt there before Him, and because the prophet Osee had said, and had been interpreted to mean, that so it would be done. When the history of mankind is seen in its completeness, how strangely and beautifully will it be found to be linked up in repetitions like this, pattern repeating pattern on the floor of this world, with ever increasing detail, with ever greater glory given to God. The hand of God is never lifted from the guiding rein. Man thinks he does his own will, and in his own limited sphere he is right; but there is a sphere greater than his own, and a will that is also done, with which the will of man cannot compare.

3. And next there is the fact that God’s ways are so different from ours. He might have struck down Herod then as He did later; but He did not. He might have given the Holy Family a longer warning than that of a few minutes; but He did not. He might have hidden them in some more convenient place than Egypt perhaps even Nazareth would have sufficed but He did not. He might have relieved their anxiety, consulted their condition, helped their necessity in a thousand ways; but He did not. Even in the first instance He might have so arranged that Herod should have known nothing, or that the Magi should have found Our Lord in some safer place; but He did not. He has preferred that His own should not be the most comfortable, the most prosperous, the most considered people in this world; to these He has said, and is forever saying: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is exceeding great in Heaven!”

Summary

1. The model of obedience in this story is easily understood.

2. The story also shows us the perfect control of the hand of God.

3. Yet that hand directs the world in ways very different from the ways of men. 

“And when they were departed, behold, an Angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying: ‘Arise and take the Child and His Mother, and fly into Egypt, and be there until I shall tell thee. For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the Child to destroy Him” (Matthew 2:13).

1. Our Lady has already learnt that the hand of God invariably bestows its favors in two parts; if there is intense joy as one ingredient, the other is also intense suffering. The Nativity was a scene of joy, but it was also a scene of utter poverty and seemingly needless privation. The conferring of the Holy Name of Jesus was a glad ceremony, but it was accompanied with the first blood-shedding of her little Child. The joy of the Presentation, and of her own Purification, had been followed immediately by the promise of the sword of sorrow. Hence, when she looked upon the Magi pouring out their treasures and their hearts at the feet of her Son, saying, “I have found Him Whom my soul loveth, I have held Him and will not let Him go,” she might well have asked herself what new trial was in store for them, for her Child, for Joseph, and for herself.

2. And we may well carry her reflection further, for there is scarcely any scene in the life of Our Lord which is more prophetic than this scene of the flight into Egypt. “By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” So had God spoken to Adam, and through Adam to the whole human race. Out of love for man He decreed that suffering should be his lot; and in one sense the more He loved the more He would permit man to suffer. He should suffer by failure, he should suffer in himself, he should suffer most of all from his fellowmen, by persecution. God would not interfere when man rose unjustly against man. When malice more than human for such has invariably been the mark of persecution rose against His own. He would not put out His hand to prevent it. Those He loved, His Church, His saints, His individual followers in the secrets of the hearts, should have the fullest share of His favors; but if they were to have most joy in life, they were also to have most sorrow.

3. We need not hope to fathom the complete understanding of all this; that is reserved for the day when “all things have been made new,” when the lights and shades in the picture are seen in their perfect setting, when “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.” It is enough for us to know that Our Lord Himself has specially blessed the persecuted: “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” It is enough to know that those who understood Him best “rejoiced that they were accounted worthy to suffer something for the name of Christ.” It is enough to see with our own eyes the discipline of persecution, its chastening effect, its power of drawing the best out of humankind, the heroism, the truth of life, the strength of purpose to which it witnesses, and, finally, the honor and glory it wins from God and man alike.

Summary

1. Suffering as well as joy is the gift of God to those whom He loves best.

2. The same is seen not only in the life of Our Lord but in the life of the whole Church.

3. The reasons are manifold, though we cannot hope to understand them all. 

“And having received an answer in sleep that they should not return to Herod, they went back another way into their own country” (Matthew 2:12).

1. The Magi stayed with Our Lord and His Mother; as St. John says of the first disciples who met Him: “They came, and saw, and abode with Him all that day.” It would be well for us if we could fathom something of the revelation that was then given to them, something of the meaning in their words when, with the disciples they could say: “We have found the Lord.” They “saw His glory” and His power; had He not commanded the stars, and made them act as guides to these His worshipers? Had He not commanded their own hearts, and guided them aright in their reaching of these wonders? They saw His faithfulness. Whatever origin is to be given to this knowledge of the Magi, it must at least be said that they were inheritors of a long tradition. They had not the accumulated possession of the Jews; but long before the Jews were chosen and set apart from the rest of mankind the promise had begun to be made. Adam was not a Jew; Noe was not a Jew; Melchisedech was not a Jew; Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses had faithful kinsfolk who were

not Jews; and it would have been strange if among all their descendants the record of the promise had perished. God had been faithful, not to the Jew only, but to all the world besides.

2. If thoughts such as these must have reigned in the hearts of the Magi, no less deep must have been the thoughts of Mary as she watched these strangers falling down and adoring. “Behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” Already her prophecy was being fulfilled. “A light for the revelation of the nations”; already the words of Simeon were coming true. Again God had shown His illuminating power; first to the shepherds on the hill, then to Simeon and Anna, and now to these strangers in a foreign land. And like them, these men had obeyed. Though their light had been less they had followed; though the labor to be taken had been greater they had undertaken it; though the prospect of reward was all but nothing they had not hesitated. “Amen, I say to you; I have not found so great faith in Israel,” said Our Lord later of a pagan centurion; and we can fancy Our Lady saying the same as she looked down upon and blessed these Gentile Magi.

3. The end of their visit came and they must tear themselves away. Whither did they go? We do not know. What became of them? We do not know. We have a tradition, but only a tradition; we really know nothing. Out of the darkness they came, into the darkness they returned; no more Jews than before, though they possessed in their hearts the treasure of treasures. And if Anna went away and “spoke of Him to all that looked for the redemption of Israel”; if of the shepherds it is said that “all they that heard wondered”, and “at those things that were told them”; then we may be sure that the same may be said of the Magi. They were the first apostles. Somewhere outside the Holy Land Christ was made known, somewhere the good tidings was spread, though the world knows nothing of it now. But how little do we know of the working of the Holy Ghost, above all outside the Church!

Summary

1. The thoughts of the adoring Magi.

2. The thoughts of Our Lady, pondering in her heart.

3. The Magi returned to their own country. 

“And when they had heard the King, they went their way, and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, until it came and stood over where the Child was. And seeing the star they rejoiced with great joy. And going into the house they found the Child with Mary His Mother, and falling down they adored Him; and opening their treasures they offered to Him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh” (Matthew 2:9-11).

1. There is an astonishing simplicity about these Wise Men from the East. They trust the blind guidance of a star; they entrust themselves to an unknown people in Jerusalem; they trust a King whose reputation for treachery is notorious; they go again on their way full of trust; and they are rewarded first by the revived guidance of the star, and then by the fulfilment of all their best hopes. It is the way of God; there are some virtues in whose exercise He seems to take special delight; and to secure this He will play with His children. Among them conspicuous are Faith, and Hope, and Charity. He will make things appear impossible that they may assert their Faith the more; He will darken the way that they may the more emphasize their Hope; He will take Himself away, that they may appeal the more vehemently in love. But “He is faithful”; and to such as He tries He gives the power to respond, and to such as respond He gives the guiding star and Himself.

2. “Seeing the star they rejoiced with great joy.” The words obviously imply that the days in Jerusalem had been painful days, days of darkness and trial, perhaps even of ridicule and insult. King Herod, it is true, had treated them with a show of interest; but the attitude of the rest, from the mere fact that none cared to go with them to act even as a guide, seems to show some contempt and opposition. But now their joy returned, and soon it was complete. “And entering into the house” —thank God, we say, it was now a house, and no longer the cold cave “they found the young Child, with Mary his Mother.” It is remarkable that St. Matthew should so emphasize the Mother, and should even add her name, Mary. Would not “they found the Child” have been enough? Would not “they found the Child and His Mother” have been enough? This little word alone shows us that St. Matthew was no less devoted to that Mother than was St. Luke or St. John.

3. The Gentile Church has always dwelt upon the scene which follows. So deeply did it in the early days associate itself with this act of adoration that the feast of the Epiphany was held with greater pomp than the feast of Christmas; even until now its octave is in one sense of greater rank, and there are parts of England where it is still called “Old Christmas Day.” “They adored Him,” acknowledging Him as the King Whom they sought. Did they know Him to be also God? They offered Him the best that they had; the tiny offering signified their desire to give Him all; nothing in their eyes was too good, nothing should be kept back. This is enough; when we speak of such worshippers believing Our Lord to be God we know not what we say. He was the One; He was the Master of the stars; He was worthy of all worship; what need we more?

Summary

1. The simple confidence of the Magi met with its reward of consolation.

2. The consolation was found, first in the guidance from Heaven, then in the finding of “the Child, with Mary, His Mother.”

3. Their adoration begins the unending adoration of the nations. 

“And Herod the King hearing this, was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling together all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where Christ should be born. But they said to him: ‘In Bethlehem of Juda: for as it is written by the Prophet: “And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come forth the ruler, who shall rule my people Israel.”’  Then Herod, privately calling the Wise Men, inquired of them diligently the time of the star s appearing to them. And sending them into Bethlehem, said: ‘Go, and search diligently after the Child, and when you have found Him, bring me word again, that I also may come and adore Him!’” Matthew 2:3-8.

1. It is proverbial, it is illustrated again and again in history and in literature, that the greatest unbelievers, above all those who are faithless with a bad conscience, are the most superstitious people in the world. Herod is no exception to this rule; one may say his character is fairly well analyzed in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, except that the latter (Macbeth) had at least an early record that was clean. He was dominated by superstitious fears, buoyed up by superstitious hopes; the coming of the Magi was one more of the influences that guided him in the merciless plans he was forever framing. But “the chief priests and scribes” —what are we to think of them? What a contrast is this recognition of prophecy to that last cry before another ruler: “We have no King but Caesar!”  Here at least they accepted the evidence; they were not interested enough to question or deny it; its significance, and therefore their opposition, would develop later.

2. But there is perhaps no passage in the New Testament which more clearly displays the mind of the Jews than this. It is agreed by all, Christians and non-Christians alike, that they were full of the spirit of prophecy. Not only did they accept direct prophecy as they had received it, but they took the whole record of the Old Testament as prophetic; they interpreted passage after passage in a prophetic sense, though literally they had no such meaning; even the events and persons in their past history, they held to be significant of the Christ that was to come. And the Holy Ghost guided them in their interpretation; as this, and several other passages quoted by the evangelists show, they were not wrong, even though they proved themselves utterly unworthy of the guidance. Though men fail Him, God still keeps His Church infallible.

3. The Magi came into Jerusalem, and found the “faithful” Jews seemingly in different. They made their inquiries in all simplicity, and found they had created a hubbub. The Church of Jerusalem had apparently gone to sleep, and was so roused to a fever by these strangers knocking at the door. Light and grace had come from an unexpected quarter, in an unexpected moment, and the “faithful” did not know what to make of it. Clearly it was light, clearly it was grace; but light and grace are sometimes annoying to those who have settled down in a contentment of indifference. They would send these Wise Men on; they themselves would not move. If the King should afterwards be found to suit their turn, they could take up His cause later; if not, they could remain where they were. There was another alternative; but that at the time did not trouble them. It was continued in the King s own words: “He that is not with Me is against Me.”

Summary

1. The character of Herod and of the chief priests and scribes.

2. The Jewish mind in regard to prophecy.

3. The treatment of the Magi in Jerusalem. 

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within thee bless His Holy Name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and never forget all He hath done for thee” (Psalm 102:1-2).

1. The great saint of the Holy Name is St. Bernardine of Siena. In his missionary expeditions he carried it on a banner, and used it continually in his sermons. He has a long treatise on the Holy Name, which teems with matter for prayer. The Holy Name, he says, is first of all fruitful for beginners. For these, for sinners, “it shows the immense mercifulness of God, it enables a devout man to gain a victory in every conflict, whether with the devil, the flesh, or the world, it has the power of healing sickness when rightly used, it fills with joy and exultation those who are in any adversity.” He quotes St. Peter, that “through His name all receive remission of sin who believe in Him”; St. John: “Your sins are forgiven you for His name s sake”; St. Peter again: “There is no other name under Heaven given to men whereby we must be saved”; the prayer of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles, that God would “stretch forth his hand to signs and cures and wonders, to be done by the name of thy only Son Jesus”; the further statement in the Acts, that the Apostles went forth “from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”

2. Next it is fruitful for the proficient. “It is cherished in their hearts and fed upon by faith, it is taken into their mouths and preached or spoken about, it is made the spring of their actions, which then become a great accumulation of merits, it is appropriated in a new way by perseverance, and then it becomes a principle of abiding and enduring life, the remedy of the frailty and fickleness which belong to our poor nature.” By virtue of this Holy Name, he tells us, we ourselves have become the sons of God. In the virtue of this Holy Name St. Paul placed all his hope of doing good. The power of the Holy Name is the power of the Holy Ghost. And for its power of endurance he asks: “Art thou not refreshed as often as thou rememberest the name of Jesus? What is there equal to it for the feeding of the mind that thinks of it, for repairing weariness, for strengthening virtues, for nourishing good and upright ways, for fostering true affections?”

3. Lastly it is fruitful for those whom he calls the perfect. The first fruit is “the sweetness with which those who meditate upon it are filled,” according to the beautiful rhythm of St. Bernard, Jesu dulcis memoria. The second is the wonderful power which this Holy Name gives to the prayers and petitions of the devout soul. The third is the immense sweetness which it gives to those who continually renew its memory. The fourth is the triumph and glory which it will produce in eternity: “They shall glory in Thee, all who love Thy Name.” And thus for the sake of the name of Jesus the whole soul will live, and be endowed and enriched and beautified with all its powers; it will be made like to God three and one, united to Him, enlightened by Him, and plunged in perfect peace through Him, for it is to live for ever in the state of perfect bliss, furnished with the accumulation of all good.”

Summary

1. The Holy name is the secret of support for sinners and beginners.

2. It is the inspiration for every thought, word, and deed of those more advanced.

3. It is the joy of those who may be thought perfect, their source of contemplation, their power in prayer, the final reward. 

“His name was called Jesus, which was called by the Angel before He was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21). 

1. It is not difficult to meditate upon the Holy Name, or to use the Holy Name in prayer. More than any other name, perhaps alone among all proper names, it is appropriate to the One Who owned it. Usually the names of men are given at random; they mean nothing in themselves; a man who happens to be called John might just as well have been called Thomas or William; the mere name tells us nothing about him; it is a convenient means of distinguishing him from others, a label put upon him and little or no more With a few human beings it has been otherwise: Adam, Abraham, Josue, John the Baptist were given names that signified the men on whom they were bestowed. But with none is this so true as it is with Our Lord  and Savior Jesus Christ. With care the Angel impressed it on His Mother’s mind: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus,” he said, and there followed the description of His future greatness. With care it was repeated to Joseph: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”

2. The Name stands as a complete summary and description of Our Lord s character and office, and it is under this aspect that it has been regarded by thousands of saints, whose hearts have melted at its mere sound. To them Jesus is their God, Jesus is their King, Jesus is their Redeemer, Jesus is their Mediator, Jesus is their Savior, Jesus is their great Priest, Jesus is their Intercessor, Jesus is the Captain under Whom they fight, Jesus is the Leader Whom they follow, Jesus is their Teacher, Jesus is the Giver of their law, Jesus is the Spouse and Shepherd of their souls, Jesus is their Light, Jesus is their Life, Jesus is the Judge before Whom they rejoice to think that they must one day stand, Jesus is their final and eternal Reward, for which alone they live. 

3. But He is also to them the mirror of all the most glorious and winning virtues. He is, and His Name tells them that He is, unbounded Charity, infinite Mercy, extremest Kindness, deepest Humility, most devoted Piety, transparent Simplicity, uttermost Poverty, Chastity without a stain. It is the prerogative of love to transform those who love into the likeness of Him Whom they love; and as the mere name of one who is loved cannot sound in the ear or be thought of in the mind without adding to the love which is already there, so the thought of the Holy Name and the mention of the Holy Name have a kind of sacramental power in the hearts of His saints. They seem to convey the grace which enables men to think like Him, to speak like Him, to act like Him, to sacrifice themselves like Him, and to Him, and for Him, and along with Him, to make Him known to others, not by word only, but also by reproduction of Him in themselves, and to win all men to love Him. 

Summary 

1. Unlike other names, the Holy Name of Jesus both designates Him to whom it is given, and is a summary description of His life and character. 

2. Then to the saints it is an ever-sufficient subject of contemplation, spreading its rays of meaning out as from a central sun. 

3. And it is an all-sufficient source of inspiration to a perfect life, seeing that Jesus is what He is, and love of Jesus makes us like to Him, and the name of Jesus fosters this love. 

“And after eight days were accomplished, that the Child should be circumcised, His name was called Jesus, which was called by the Angel before He was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21). 

1. We recognize at once, in the simple narrative of these lives, the immediate decision of Our Lady and St. Joseph that they will make no difference between themselves and others, just because of the Child that has been given to them. Other parents submit their children to the law by a certain definite ceremony; they will do the same with theirs, though they know Him to be above the law. Here, as always, their rule is that, unless they receive some special intimation from above, they will do the ordinary thing; probably, indeed, they were themselves so ordinary and natural, and like everybody else, that it never occurred to them to act otherwise. We watch this characteristic working throughout the life of the Holy Family; Mary and Joseph act differently from others only when they have a special mandate to do so, and sometimes, when that mandate might have been expected, it does not come. 

2. In this ceremony Our Lord performs His first public act as man. He is born a Jew, under the law; therefore, as He said of Himself on a very similar occasion, when submitting to the baptism of John, it “behooved Him to fulfil all justice.” On both occasions there is no question of His own individual need; but there is a distinct declaration that He has made common cause with those who did need it. Circumcision had been enjoined on Abraham and his children as a sign of the covenant made with Him by God. It was a mark of these children, and of their faith in the promises of God. It implied also, as St. Paul teaches, the obligation to keep the Mosaic Law, once that Law had become established. Our Lord accepted Circumcision, as it were, upon these terms. His Circumcision fulfilled and gave power to all the circumcisions which had been administered under the covenant with Abraham, even as His Sacrifice gave power to all the sacrifices that had gone before. He then took away the rite once for all, in the new Christian Sacrament of Baptism, even as in the Sacrifice of the New Law He closed the sacrifices of the old. 

3. Catholic contemplation dwells upon the Circumcision as the first shedding of the Precious Blood. We feel with Mary and St. Joseph, who saw in this blood-shedding, the beginning of Our Lord's life of bodily suffering. We feel that they must have known, even if only dimly, that this ceremony was of great significance, both for the past and for the future; that the blood-shedding of Abel, and of all who had suffered or were to suffer, was in some way to find in this Child its sanction, its anti-type, its consummation; that therefore through much blood-shedding would that Child come to His own. And on the other hand there was joy in their hearts at this further realization of the faithfulness of God. Now at last, with the Precious Blood of Christ, the “Lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world,” was the price of man’s redemption being paid. The blood of man, drawn from Our Lady’s own veins, was now at last of value sufficient to atone, because it became the blood of the Son of God. Upon this thought St. Paul continually meditates. 

Summary 

1. The simplicity of the Holy Family, making itself exactly like others in spite of its honor, is nowhere more manifest than in the story of the Circumcision. 

2. The Circumcision itself is the fulfillment of the Covenant in a double sense. 

3. This first shedding of the Precious Blood is the beginning of the great work of Atonement, with all its sorrows and all its joy.

“And it came to pass that after the Angels departed from them into Heaven the shepherds said one to another, Let us go over to Bethlehem, and let us see this word that is come to pass, which the Lord hath showed to us. And they came with haste, and they found Mary and Joseph, and the Infant lying in a manger. And seeing, they understood of the word that had been spoken to them concerning the Child. And all they that heard wondered, and at those things that were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God, for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them” (Luke 2:15-20). 

1. Christian simplicity loves most to dwell on this visit of the shepherds to the manger. It is pictured more than any other scene; our cribs always try to represent it; our Christmas hymns, especially our oldest carols, win us with the simple story. And the reason is not difficult to find; for the shepherds “coming with haste,” without any express injunction from the angels, without any shadow of doubt in their hearts, and finding, apparently so easily, “Mary and Joseph and the Infant” and “understanding of the word,” though what they exactly “understood”  they probably could not have told us all this is eminently typical of that spirit of devotion which runs through all Christianity, which makes children “understand” the Blessed Sacrament, and which “draws all things to Himself,” the hearts of men finding in Christ Our Lord the peace and the certainty which are nowhere else. 

2. The shepherds went away happy men. They had not known happiness of this kind before. They could not have wished to be anything other than just what they were; they would not have exchanged their rank with anyone; even now, wherever they are in Heaven, one may safely say with St. Luke they are “glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, as it had been told them”  that night. So often in our lives there are moments which have made all the rest of life worth living, and for which we shall never cease to praise God for all eternity a conversion, a special grace through the sacraments, a special light which has made us understand, a crisis through which we have been guided, a vocation, a dedication in some peculiar way, a proof beyond possibility of doubt of Our Lord’s favor, and protection, and guidance, and intense love. We owe Our Lord very much; we thank Him very little; the shepherds remind us of this duty. 

3. There were two sets of people affected by the shepherds. The first were the simple people who heard the simple story from their simple lips. “And all they that heard wondered at these things that were told them by the shepherds.”There was proof enough for them in the narrative itself and in those who told it; just as little Bernadette is proof enough in herself of the Lourdes apparitions, or as a child that pours out its little heart in its first communion is proof enough in its degree of the Blessed Sacrament.  They wondered; they did not pretend to understand; they were content to revere. And, secondly, there was Our Lady. “But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.” How did she “ponder” them? What were her reflections? What deepest thoughts of deepest poets could compare with Our Lady’s ponderings? She knew so much, yet so little; and the much that she knew made her lose herself in God s infinity. 

Summary 

1. The shepherds the models of devotion. 

2. The effects of devotion on themselves. 

3. Their effect on others. 

As regards that Second Coming, which is to be in majesty and power on the Last Day, we have meditated upon it during Advent. The fear of the Wrath to come should have roused our souls from their lethargy, and have prepared them, by humility of heart, to receive the visit of Jesus in that secret Coming which he makes to the soul of man. It is the ineffable mystery of this intermediate Coming that we are now going to explain.

We have shown elsewhere how the time of Advent belongs to that period of the spiritual life which is called, in Mystic Theology, the Purgative Life, during which the soul cleanses herself from sin and the occasions of sin, by the fear of God’s judgements, and by combating against evil concupiscence. We are taking it for granted that every faithful soul has journeyed through these rugged paths, which must be gone through before she could be admitted to the Feast to which the Church invites all mankind, saying to them, on the Saturday of the Second Week of Advent, these words of the Prophet Isaias: “Behold! This is our God: we have waited for him, and he will save us. We have patiently waited for him, and we shall rejoice and be joyful in his Salvation!” (Isaias 25:9). 

As in the house of our heavenly Father there are many mansions (John 14:2), so likewise, on the grand Solemnity of Christmas, when those words of Isaias are realized, the Church sees, amongst the countless throng who receive the Bread of Life, a great variety of sentiments and dispositions. Some were dead, and the graces given during the holy Season of Advent have restored them to life: others, whose spiritual life had long been healthy, have so spent their Advent that its holy exercises have redoubled their love of their Lord, and their entrance into Bethlehem has been to them a renewal of their soul’s life.

Now every soul that has been admitted to Bethlehem, that is to say, into the House of Bread, and has been united with him who is the Light of the World — that soul no longer walks in darkness. The mystery of Christmas is one of Illumination; and the grace it produces in the soul that corresponds with it, places her in the second stage of the mystic Life, which is called the Illuminative Life. Henceforward, then, we need no longer weary ourselves watching for our Savior’s arrival; he has come, he has shone upon us, and we are resolved to keep up the light, nay, to cherish its growth within us, in proportion as the Liturgical Year unfolds its successive seasons of mysteries and graces. God grant that we may reflect in our souls the Church’s progressive development of this divine Light; and he led by its brightness to that Union which crowns both the year of the Church, and the faithful soul which has spent the year under the Church’s guidance!

But, in the mystery of Christmastide, this Light is given to us, so to speak, softened down; our weakness required that it should be so. It is indeed the Divine Word, the Wisdom of the Father, that we are invited to know and imitate; but this Word, this Wisdom, are shown us under the appearance of a Child. Let nothing keep us from approaching him. We might fear were he seated on a throne in his palace; but he is lying on a crib in a stable! Were it the time of His Fatigues, His Bloody Sweat, His Cross, His Burial, or even of His Glory and His Victory, we might say we had not courage enough: but what courage is needed to go near Him in Bethlehem, where all is sweetness and silence, and a simple Little Babe! “Come to Him,” says the Psalmist, “and be enlightened!” (Psalm 33:6).

“And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the Heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of goodwill” (Luke 2:13-14). 

1. It was fitting that this manifestation of the angels should have been made on this night of the Nativity. The Fathers of the Church, when speaking of the fall of the rebel angels, tend to explain it as the refusal to adore the Incarnate God that was to be; they would not bow down before Him who was to make Himself “less than the angels.” Hence, when the actual manifestation came, those who had been faithful, could not but have rejoiced; they must have seen in that Child more than even Mary saw, for they saw His Godhead shining through His human frame, and they recognized in Him the great union of God with men. Later Our Lord was to speak of His own love for and reliance on His angels; in the entrusting to them of children, in the use He would make of them to separate the just from the unjust, in the acceptance of an angel to strengthen Him in the Garden of Gethsemane; in the knowledge that He had but to ask His Father and legions of angels would come to His support. Christmas Day, then, is a feast of the angels as well as of men. 

2. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of goodwill.” This was the angels’ song of praise. It has two divisions. First, at the moment of Our Lord’s great humiliation on this earth, the angels break out with their chorus of praise. St. Paul saw it in the same light: “He hath humbled Himself . . . therefore God hath exalted Him.” Then the consequences to war-worn man are recorded. Man at war with God, man at war with himself, man all restless, is at last to be given peace, if only he will have it. Again St. Paul sees with the angels eyes: “He is our peace,” he says,“Who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities, in His flesh, making void the law of commandments contained in decrees, that He mighty make the two in Himself into one man, making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body on the cross, killing the enmities in Himself.” It was not merely the “Pax Romana,” (the Roman Peace) at that moment reigning, that the angels announced; it was the still greater “Peace which the world cannot give,” which those know who possess it. 

3. The Church has taken these words of the angels and has built upon them one of the most beautiful of her hymns. In the first part she dwells on and expands the first words of the angels, endeavoring to give expression to their affections when she sings: “We praise Thee! We bless Thee! We adore Thee! We glorify Thee! We give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!” Then the hymn turns to the earthly results of the great mystery, hailing Our Lord as the Incarnate Son, the Lamb of God, who brings about peace on earth by means of the redemption in His blood. This is God and Man, the Redeemer, Who taketh away the sins of the world. And, lastly, He is called upon as having accomplished His work and reigning in heaven, where He is associated with the Father and the Holy Ghost: “Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son. Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Thou Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us; Thou Who takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer; Thou art seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us. For Thou alone art the Holy One; Thou alone art the Lord; Thou alone art the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father.”

Summary

1. The fitness of the adoration of the Angels at the Nativity. 

2. The fitness of their song: Glory to God, peace to men of goodwill. 

3. The development of this by the Church. 

“And there were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night-watches over their flocks. And behold an Angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone about them, and they feared with a great fear. And the Angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold I bring you tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: for this day is born to you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign to you: you shall find the Infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes and laid in a manger!’” (Luke 2:8-12). 

1. Later in His life, when our Lord was preaching on the Kingdom of Heaven, He described the master of the feast as angry with those who had been invited and had refused, and as giving orders that his servants should turn to those in the bye-ways, and should compel them to come in. Such in deed has been His way from the beginning until now; “the poor have the Gospel preached to them”; in the poor rests the true life of the Church; a safe test of the power of the Church in any country is the hold she has upon the poor of that country. And this character of His call was the first He struck on coming into the world. The great and powerful had ignored Him; the busy world had all manner of excuses; so His angels were sent to the shepherds on the hill-side, here, as so often afterwards, the first-fruits of His coming. 

2. Nor is it to be by some kind of accident that these shepherds are to be called. They are not to wander down the hill and along the road to Bethlehem, and to find the Child on the way. It is possible that the cave was one in which they had often taken shelter; but that was not to be their guide this night. Another principle God would establish; not only would He show that the poor are His special choice, but He would also show that, when He willed it, He is independent of man for the spreading of His glory. He has His ministering angels, sometimes manifesting themselves to simple souls, more often doing their work in hiddenness, because the souls of men are not simple. It is a true instinct which makes us associate angels with little children; for it is the eyes of simple children that best can see them; it is the minds of children that best can understand them, just as it is little children that seem to come nearest to grasping the reality of the Blessed Sacrament. 

3. The shepherds “feared with a great Fear” at the sight of the Angel of the Lord who stood by them, and at the brightness of God which shone about them; as who would not? But this implies no doubt; it implies the simplicity of children. So they were reassured; and as children they accepted the reassurance. “Fear not,” said the Angel; this is the third time we have heard the words from an angel s lips. “Fear not, Mary,” Our Lady was told; “Fear not, Zachary,”was said to the priest; and now “Fear not”  is said to the shepherds and “all the people.” No wonder that a master-saint has said that the first operation of an angel of light is to calm the human soul and to remove from it fear and unrest. The rest of his message is full of deep meaning. He brings “tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people.” The message is the news of the birth of the “Savior, Who is Christ the Lord.” And they are shown how and when they shall find Him. And to this day Christmas remains the season of “great joy to all the people.” 

Summary

1. The shepherds are the first called to the Crib; consistently with the rest of Our Lord s practice. 

2. They are called by the Angel; in great moments God acts independently of men. 

3. The message is one of great joy; which has been “ to all the people “ from that day to this. 

+“And thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, art a little one among the thousands of Juda: out of thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be the ruler in Israel ; and His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. . . . And He shall stand, and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the height of the name of the Lord His God: and they shall be converted, for now shall He be magnified even to the ends of the earth.” (Micheas 5:2-4). 

1. In meditating on the Child in the manger we cannot do better than follow the meditations of His own saints. First is that of St. Paul; this is how his thoughts go: “Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. For He, though He was by nature God, yet did not set great store on His equality with God; rather, He emptied Himself by taking the nature of a slave and becoming like unto men. And after He had appeared in outward form as man, He humbled Himself [yet more] by obedience, yea, unto death upon a cross. Wherefore God hath exalted Him above the highest, and hath bestowed on Him the name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11, Westminster version). Thus St. Paul dwells upon the Nativity in its reference to our Lord Himself, His humiliation in it, and His glory. 

2. Next is St. John, writing long after St. Paul. He says: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . And of His fullness we all have received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, grace and truth by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him” (John 1:14-18). And he comments on this passage in these words: “By this hath the love of God appeared to us, because God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we may live by Him. In this is love: not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. My dearest, if God hath so loved us; we also ought to love one another” (1 John  4:9-11). Thus St. John dwells upon the Nativity in its reference to us. 

3. Yet a further contemplation is that of St. Ignatius Loyola. He bids us “to see and consider what they are doing that is to say, the journey and the labor that they undergo in order that our Lord may be born in extreme poverty; and in order that after such toils, after hunger, thirst, heat, cold, insults, and affronts, He may die on the Cross, and all this for me; and then by reflecting to derive some spiritual profit.” 

Thus does the saint apply to this meditation his principle that “ love ought to be found in deeds rather than in words”; and by dwelling on the deeds of love of Christ Our Lord, begun here in the manger of Bethlehem, he would stir us to like deeds of love in our degree; how, as he says elsewhere, “I, on my side, with great reason and justice, ought to offer and give to His Divine Majesty all things that are mine, and myself with them.” 

Summary

1. St. Paul dwells on the example of humiliation contained in the Nativity, and exhorts us to follow. 

2. St. John dwells on the example of love, and exhorts us to the same. 

3. St. Ignatius dwells on the example of sacrifice, the truest test of love: “all this for me.” 

“And it came to pass that in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled. This enrolling was first done by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child. And it came to pass that when they were there her days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him up in swaddling-clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:1-7). 

1. It is characteristic of the Gospels that the greatest events are told in the fewest words and with the utmost simplicity. The institution of the Blessed Sacrament, the Crucifixion, the power of Absolution, are all told in a sentence; and the story of the birth of our Lord is no exception to the rule. Indeed, but for St. Luke we might not have heard of it at all. But perhaps we have enough. To begin with we know that “there was no room for them in the inn.” Nor, apparently, was there much room for them in all Bethlehem. Nor later was there room for them in all Palestine. Nor, later still, does there seem to be much room for Him in all the world. Nor, today, is there much room for Him in the lives and hearts of most men. But I must not blame others; is there much room for Him in mine? 

2. Still a shelter of some kind was found, though it is to be noticed that St. Luke does not mention it. If we had no more than his description to go upon, we should almost be compelled to conclude that our Lord was born in the gutter by the roadside; literally the birth of a pauper and an outcast. The mention of the manger leads us to conclude that there was a shelter of some sort overhead; but not all mangers are indoors, especially in the East. Still let us accept the firm tradition, for the sake of our pitiful human nature if for nothing else; when our King first came into this world, at least He was given a stable cave in which He could be born, at least He was treated as well as our cattle, if not as well as ourselves. 

3. And now that He is born, and lies helpless and apparently unnoticing before us like any other infant, let us kneel beside Him, with Mary, and Joseph, and the maid, and the countless saints who from that time till today have found in the mere sight of this Child enough to satisfy all their strongest cravings. Let us watch Him and His first adorers, in company with St. Gertrude, and St. Bridget, and St. Theresa. Let us take Him into our arms and nurse Him, as St. Bonaventure recommends us, and as St. Anthony of Padua was privileged to do, and St. Stanislaus Kostka, and so many more saints of weary life and labor. Let us give Him back to Our Lady, and learn from her a lesson on the way her Child should be treated. Let us hear the words ringing round the room, for our own greater consolation: “As many as received Him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, to them that believe in His name.” St. John then comments on his own words: “Brethren, you are now sons of God, but you know not what you shall be.” 

Summary

1. “There was no room for Him in the inn.” Nor has there been much room for Him anywhere in this world. 

2. “He was laid in a manger.” At least this much was given Him; and it is enough to satisfy Him. 

3. It is much for us to be able to unite ourselves with His first adorers.